Board gaming enthusiasts know and love the game Catan. Troy Fluhr of Rocky Mountain Geek Tank took time before the Catan National few minutes out to explain what Catan National Qualifier Tournament held a HexaCon last weekend Jan. 17-20, 2020. Gamers of all ages filled two floors of fun playing every board game imaginable, role-playing games (RPGs), live-action role-playing (LARPs), miniatures, and more.
Colleen Bement: There is a lot of excitement around this Catan Tournament here at HexaCon. Tell us about it.
Troy Fluhr: Catan was created in 1995 be sure to look that up on Wikipedia and he said the last he played it was called Settlers of Catan. It’s one of the few games where there’s no combat so the only aggressiveness is just building your own cities and roads in place is that somebody else might want.
CB: How is it played?
TF: You use two sets of dice and every play roles at the start of their turn. If you roll a 7, you move the robber and you put the robber on one of these little hexes that produce a different resource. It prevents that text from producing that resource on its turn. You also get to steal one of those resource cards from a player that has the card who has one of those cities or settlements on that resource.
The great thing about this game is all about developing and crunching statistical numbers; then getting mad when the statistics don’t play out the way they’re supposed to. 7 is the most probable, and 6 and 8 are the next most probable. People get frustrated when they don’t come up often.
The tournament is a qualifier for the National Tournament that will take place in Columbus, Ohio at Origins. The winner gets a free pass and possibly accommodations. The winner of that tournament will go on to the International Tournament on the island of Malta. The airfare and accommodations are even paid for!
Meet the winner of the Catan Tournament
Find out more about the Rocky Mountain Geek Tank.
Written by Colleen Bement